Interview: Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer PAGE 16 | Business Executive | Issue 123
Interview: Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer
We reviewed The Progress Principle in our November issue. During a visit to London by the authors, your Editor had the privilege of meeting them and discussing their illuminating ideas
BEX: Please give us a bit more detail about the ideas in your new book The Progress Principle. TA/SK: The book is about what makes people happy and keeps them motivated, creative and productive at work. Think about employee engagement, how it influences performance, and how it is influenced by what happens at work. What makes people happy and motivated is the progress principle; the single most important element of people’s work is making meaningful progress.
BEX: You introduce the concept of “inner worklife.” Could you describe this, and how does it affect employee performance? TA/SK: Inner work life is the constant stream of motivations that people experience and react to in making sense of the events in their work. The common wisdom is that people must
suffer to be creative. But we found that people are most creative and productive when they are happy, have positive perceptions of their work, their organisation, and their colleagues, and when they are motivated by the work itself. This is the inner worklife effect; it makes people creative and productive. The progress principle and the inner worklife
effect give managers powerful tools to increase performance and enhance the well-being of workers.
The best way to boost creative productivity is to give people
meaningful work and support in making consistent progress in that work.
BEX: How can understanding the Progress Principle affect a company’s bottom line? TA/SK: Progress enhances inner work life; this leads to higher levels of creativity, productivity, commitment to the work, and collegiality. All contribute to a company’s bottom line. People who feel good about their work and the people they work with are less likely to look elsewhere for work. How better to retain people than to help them succeed? Also people are less likely to be off sick when they are happy, so fewer hours are lost to absenteeism.
STEVE KRAMER is a management psychologist. TERESA AMABILE is a Harvard professor and a social psychologist.
BEX: Does every individual experience their inner work life in the same way? TA/SK: Of course people differ in any number of ways that will affect their overall inner work lives. Although inner work life varies from day to day for everyone, the same kinds of events cause most people’s inner work lives to change in the same ways. However, we only studied knowledge workers. These are professionals, and most of their work has some intrinsic value. The progress principle relies on having work that is meaningful. So, people who are
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